Company logo on left side and lower toolbar

[TeSol]

Hi,

This is the first time I am posing a question to this forum though I have been following a lot of the posts. Since there are many knowledgeable Flare users on this forum, I do hope one of you will be able to help me find a solution to my problem.

Fyi, I use Flare 7.2 and Windows 7.

My output should have the following.

1) A header area where the company logo is on the left side.

2) A dark grey area (toolbar) with the title of the active accordian item on the left and the webhelp toolbar buttons on the right.

3) The border between the left pane and the content area should be white in color.

I am unable to do these using the skin or the css. Is there something I am missing? Or is it at all possible to do this?

Any help/suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
TeSol.

[NorthEast]

You can't really do much to change the layout of the panes in the skin, just the options you see on the WebHelp Setup tab, and you can't add your own panes.

1) You can't add a 'header area', or any extra panes to the skin; if you want the header above the toolbar, you could perhaps increase the toolbar height and use a background image that includes your logo with a strip underneath for the toolbar icons.

2) Is the default WebHelp layout not like this? It has the accordion title on the left, and toolbar buttons to the right (unless you mean right-aligned).

3) You can't change this in the skin. If you're experienced in CSS, then it's maybe possible by modifying the CSS for the frameset, but that's not something I can go into.

[LTinker68]

1) You can't add a 'header area', or any extra panes to the skin; if you want the header above the toolbar, you could perhaps increase the toolbar height and use a background image that includes your logo with a strip underneath for the toolbar icons.

You can make a "header" pane, but it takes a few steps, and it's essentially a static pane. That is, it won't contain any of the Flare items like the toolbar -- it won't interact with the help, per se, but just be another area would you could display info. What you're essentially doing is putting the Flare frameset inside another frameset. I don't know how well that would work with search engines if you're putting the output on a public server, though. I do this for one project, but it's for an internal site so it wouldn't be accessible to Google, Yahoo, Bing, or the other search engines, and Flare's internal search still works with this setup, so it works great for my needs.

Alternatively, theoretically, you could manually modify the default.htm and default_Left.htm files to add a new static frame above the mctoolbar frame, but you'd have to replace the generated default.htm and default_Left.htm files with your modified ones every time you did a build.

If you want to go the first route, let me know and I'll write out the steps as best as I can remember them.

[TeSol]

Thanks Dave and Lisa for your replies. They have given me a few ideas to work around with.

Lisa's option of including a static header pane sounds good. I would only want to add the company logo there on the left side - so I guess it should be fine. I could then have the regular toolbar below. The second option of modifying the html files and copying everytime I build is fine for a one-off build. But since that is never the case and at this stage, there is a possibility that the build may not even be done by me, I shouldnt even consider it. I guess I will go with the first option, Lisa. So it would be great if you could help me out with the steps.

Regards,
TeSol.

[NorthEast]

Going back to point (1), this post here (that you found too) shows what I was suggesting; the logo appears to be in a separate section above the toolbar, but the black and grey bars are actually part of the same image used as the toolbar background.

Putting the WebHelp inside a frame as LTinker suggests would work, and is a better option if you need to add a number of controls or links in the header section. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether CSH calls would work ok; LTinker - do CSH calls work ok, and do they re-use the same window properly?

[LTinker68]

LTinker - do CSH calls work ok, and do they re-use the same window properly?

Nuts. I thought it did, but I just tested it again and it doesn't include the header frame using the first option. I'm going to play with it a bit more and/or send the steps to MadCap Support and see if they can figure out a workaround. I must prefer the process being automated with the flexibility of being able to put more items in the frame than you'd get with a still image.

I also just tried modifying the default.htm and default_Left.htm files and it didn't work, but I was modifying a help built with the old method, so I might have a conflict there. So test modifying just your generated default.htm and see if that works. If it doesn't, then a static image background and a taller toolbar would be the best short-term workaround. That won't work for me since I also need a fixed footer. I'm going to contact MadCap Support and see if they can figure out a workaround using the original method, although I don't generally need to make CSH calls, so I'm pretty much ok in this particular case if they don't get it to work.

Make sure you submit a feature request at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx.

[TeSol]

Thanks Dave and Lisa for trying to help. I must confess though that I am totally lost. I have no idea how to put the image in the header and add the toolbar icons to it. It would be a big help if you could list it out for me step by step. Hope it wont be too much trouble....

Thanks and regards.

[NorthEast]

See the help on how to style your skin, this topic covers the toolbar:

http://webhelp.madcapsoftware.com/flare ... Frames.htm

[TeSol]

Thanks Dave and Lisa for all the help.....